The challenge of measuring social media

With great data comes great responsibility. With more brands
than you can shake a stick at competing for attention on a growing number of
social media channels, making sense of the resultant huge amount of data has
become increasingly difficult.

‘Comms is developing so quickly but
measurement isn't catching up,’ says Katie Buckett, co-founder of consultancy
OneFifty. ‘What might have worked before just doesn't have a relevance now.’one

‘The pace of
innovation produces a problem for how you standardise measurement,’ says George
Cathcart, social lead at agency Threepipe. ‘A while ago, Facebook was
determining success on how many fans you had; it was selling Likes. It then turned
around and said <i>That’s no longer important</i> and organic reach
disappeared.

‘Engagement
is the most clear marker of how well you’re doing, but Facebook has played down
the engagement piece and offered new metrics and custom measurement frameworks.
It creates even more of a headache.’

Indeed, what
poses a large problem for social media practitioners is the lack of a
measurement standard. This is due to the rise of platforms like Snapchat, whose
story format is hard to measure, alongside the fact that organisations are
playing their cards closer to their chests as the value of data insights to
their company increases.

‘[Social
media analytics tools] are not as good as they used to be,’ explains Cathcart.
‘[They] launched before organic reach tanked. Things were more democratic in
terms of engagement and you could be confident that nothing else was going on.
Most people in social were supporting with the same level of paid activity.
That model broke. What [analytics
tools] are good for is benchmarking content and fans but it’s not as powerful a
tool as it used to be because companies rely on private data. It all depends on
how important it is to compare yourself against others.

‘The golden
ticket would be an agreement between brands on how everyone should be measuring
[their work]. It would take mass sharing of private data but data is worth a
lot of money. It’s not going to happen.’

Similarly,
the industry also lacks a tool that effectively measures each output and outcome
a company could wish for. What tool is used depends on what is being measured,
whether firms are using social to drive sales or brand awareness, get people to
click through to their website or share their content.

Erin
Salisbury, senior project manager at Ketchum, explains: ‘We start with the
objectives: how does that align with what we are doing? We’re trying to prove
the value of what we do, earn every dollar, earn our stripes.

‘Our objectives
are closely linked to outputs, which we describe as low-hanging fruit, such as
impressions. This all funnels down to outcomes: is our audience doing what we
want them to do, whether that’s clicking through to a website or buying a
product? We look at how people are actually acting. There are a lot of layers
across the whole consumer journey, from Are they thinking about
us? all the way through to advocacy.’

However,
Salisbury warns: ‘There’s no one size fits all solution to measurement. We all
want to adhere to best practice. Tools are so dependent on what it is our
clients are trying to do.’

‘It's unrealistic to think there's
one metric,’ Buckett agrees. ‘Ultimately it needs to move beyond comms metrics
towards quantifying what you're achieving for the business. That's when we'll
start showing the true value of comms. The hope of having one metric is the
lazy way out.’

It is important to find a level of consistency in
the metrics chosen, though there are so many to choose from.

‘Start every year by defining the metrics for that moment, even if six
months down the line that’s called into question,’ says Cathcart. On Facebook, for example, each post has a
different tracking link which makes it easy to see which ones drive the most
engagement. ‘If you’re
consistent, look back on how you’ve done for the entire year, see exactly how many
sales were made through Facebook or Twitter,’ concludes Cathcart.

Buckett agrees that consistency is key. ‘If you
don't measure, how do you know what will work or your start point?’ she asks.
‘It's all too easy to jump straight into creative, but measuring first will pay
off long-term. Ultimately, we need to show value.’

But with smaller budgets and more emphasis on the
bottom line, how can social media managers show that value in a clear way?

‘It's more about understanding that there is a way
to be accountable and measurable. It's not a five minute quick fix but we can
show value, if we want to,’ says Buckett. ‘Now metrics have moved to reach and
engagement, which are relevant, but only within the context of what they mean
to the bigger picture. What does that drive for your business? There's a
limited time now until it will no longer be acceptable not to have an answer.’

‘There’s a consistent education piece,’ says Salisbury. ‘Some clients are
more sophisticated than others. We get clients with backgrounds in a bunch of
different areas; we’re always connecting data and tailoring it to different
audiences. It’s our responsibility [to use measurement and evaluation to
understand a cohesive story and find trends across data].’

Cathcart
believes that organisations are becoming more discerning about social media.
Initially, they were under pressure to be visible across all social media channels,
but as platforms have developed and new ones have sprung up, they are now considering
the cost.

‘Return on
investment and marketing spend has cropped up again; there’s a problem with
budgets,’ continues Cathcart. ‘Two or three years ago, budgets were more loose
and open, but now companies are looking for a controlled return. It is
important to display more rigour and transparency over what money is going to
achieve.’

Fortunately,
in this case, more money doesn’t necessarily buy better tools. Both Cathcart
and Salisbury believe that the ‘vanilla’ analytics built into the likes of
Facebook and Twitter have come a long way since the beginning.

‘We post
across Facebook and Twitter, and generally use the native analytics within
those tools,’ says Salisbury. ‘Then we might put a third part listening tool on
it, which listens more generally to what’s going on. We have preferred partners
but as a team, we’re generally tool agnostic.’

‘A lot of
people get hung up on tools but there’s a lot you can divine from looking on a
platform itself,’ agrees Cathcart. ‘Where third parties come in is data manipulation,
making it look pretty. It’s a time-saving middle man really.’

‘People are throwing too much money at tools when
mostly platforms have excellent analytics,’ says John Brown, head of engagement
at Hotwire. ‘Facebook’s analytics are brilliant and Google Analytics will give
you a good picture. Don’t overthink it.’

Social media
managers may wish they had never got into such a complicated business, but that
is not for them to decide.All they have
to decide is what to do with the data that is given to them.‘It’s important to know when to stay still and when to shift everything
up,’ says Cathcart. ‘Your metrics need to be relevant and attainable.’

‘There's isn't a golden bullet here. Measurement
deserves and, at this point in comms, needs to be done properly, because it's
then that you'll get the real value from it – insights and learnings on what
genuinely worked and what you can take going forward,’ asserts Buckett.

‘I don’t think it’s the tools that are outdated;
it’s thinking that’s outdated,’ says Brown. ‘People are too focused on how many
posts they are getting out, how many retweets they get. They need to look at
content.’

‘It’s not
just about what we’re putting out there, it’s about the customer doing what we
want them to do it with it,’ says Salisbury. ‘What we want to do in public
relations is move up the strategy food chain. We want to get up front and be a
data-driven organisation, empowering teams not to be stuck in a PR box and to be
present at those initial conversations.’

So next time
you see your friendly neighbourhood social media manager, perhaps invite them
to your next board meeting. The information they have gleaned from poring over
social media reports may just save the day.